As hard disk drive capacities and data rates have increased, a need has arisen to maintain mechanical isolation between the card electronics and the head disk assembly (HDA). Areal density has increased by storing data in tracks closer together on the recording disk. The areal density of disk drives has reached a point that vibration within the disk drive and from adjacent disk drives within a large system can have effects on neighboring disk drives in large systems. With hard disk drives operating in the range of 10K rpm, large banks of drives operating simultaneously may cause excessive vibration. Other sources of vibration and mechanical shock may include hot plugging operations or system maintenance. Hot plugging occurs when disk drives are inserted or removed while the system is operating. Vibration and mechanical shock from these sources is known to force the recording heads out of their appropriate tracks with the high areal density.
Mechanical isolation would reduce the amount of vibration or mechanical shock to the servo control system. Currently, any shock or vibration experienced in the system travels directly through system backplanes into the interface connector and back into the HDA. There are several prior art connector designs which are readily available to the industry. In each case, however, one end or both ends of the connectors are hard mounted to at least one piece of the system. The hard mounting could be a solder joint, rivets, screws or other fastening devices. Hard mounted fasteners set up a direct path between the operating and vibrating HDA to the electronics and out to the backplane. When shock or vibration is allowed to propagate through this path, the total system performance is diminished.